We in Pennsylvania have been in the political bullseye since the 2024 presidential campaign began. Tonight, Pennsylvanians will join the rest of the nation in parsing early returns to try to see who will come out on top. 

Patrick Ruffini at The Intersection has a list of lists highlighting counties across the nation that might indicate which way things are going. At PoliticsPA, Steve Ulrich has a list of Pennsylvania state senate seats that could go either way. If one party is sweeping those, it will probably carry the state. 

But where, locally, can we look for a hint of things to come? Polls close in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware at 8:00 p.m., which is when the first votes will begin to trickle in. Here in Pennsylvania, Northampton and Erie counties are widely agreed to be the swing counties of the swing state, and it’s hard to disagree. 

In 2016, Trump carried Northampton County — the eastern half of the Lehigh Valley — by 3.78 percent. In 2020, he lost it by 0.72 percent. In both cases, Trump did slightly better in Northampton than he did statewide, but not by very much. A Harris win in Northampton would be a sign that Trump’s efforts in Lehigh Valley — and especially among Hispanic voters there — has fallen flat. A win there doesn’t guarantee a statewide win for Harris, but it would be a good sign.

Erie County also mirrored state results recently. Trump won it by 1.57 percent in 2016 and lost it by 1.03 percent in 2020. National media has had Erie under the microscope for this reason. Its margin was almost exactly that of the statewide margin, and probably will be again. Was the Democratic plurality there in 2020 the result of Joe Biden’s home-state appeal, or a broader rejection of Trump and the Republican Party? We’ll know soon enough.

If you want to get even more granular, there are municipalities in the Philly suburbs that serve the same function. In Lower Pottsgrove, Montgomery County, for example, Trump won by 158 votes in 2016 and lost by 310 votes in 2020. Will that Democratic trend continue there as it has in many suburban communities outside of Philadelphia? A Trump win would suggest that the suburbs are sliding slightly back toward their old Republican loyalty. But even a Trump loss there is not fatal to him, if he makes up the losses elsewhere.

But as slowly as Pennsylvania counts votes, it might not do much good to look to the Keystone State for a leading indicator. By the time they finish counting the mail-in vote, other states will have already shown the way things are going.

No one expects Harris to lose Delaware or New Jersey. But within those states are communities that could well predict a swing that is mirrored here in Pennsylvania. Just across the Delaware River, Gloucester County is a swing county in a non-swing state. Trump won Gloucester by 0.48 percent in 2016 — similar to his 0.72 percent margin in neighboring Pennsylvania. In 2020, he lost the suburban county by 1.94 percent, close to Biden’s 1.17 percentage point margin in Pennsylvania. While Pennsylvania is still counting, New Jersey might let us have a preview of the result.

Kent County in Delaware is another place to look to read the national tea leaves. The middle of Delaware’s three counties, Kent has voted for the candidate who went on to win the whole election every year except once since Dwight Eisenhower’s first election in 1952 (the exception was 1992, when George Bush won it by 198 votes). Biden’s candidacy might have inflated his victory there, but Kent County, Delaware tracks the national vote more closely than anything else in the Philly region. Will the streak continue tonight?

Kyle Sammin is the managing editor of Broad + Liberty.